


the world our sin has made

by madnessiseverything



Series: narnia x tma [2]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Dark Pevensies, Family Reunions, Gen, Hugs, decidedly not human Pevensies, minor mentions of blood, sorta at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:21:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27526798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madnessiseverything/pseuds/madnessiseverything
Summary: When the sun starts to set, they will go their separate ways again. Lucy’s world will call for her to return to her throne, Edmund’s shop will have a new customer in need of a spark, Peter will start singing war songs none of them know the harmonies for. Each of her siblings will leave, one after the other, and the hole in her heart will grow again. She will feel too warm, and she will let the fog seep into her skin to bring the cold back. But not yet.the one where reunions happen and the magnus institute's newest acquisition is discussed.
Relationships: Edmund Pevensie & Lucy Pevensie & Peter Pevensie & Susan Pevensie, Edmund Pevensie & Susan Pevensie, Lucy Pevensie & Susan Pevensie, Peter Pevensie & Susan Pevensie
Series: narnia x tma [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937485
Comments: 4
Kudos: 56





	the world our sin has made

**Author's Note:**

> at last! part two of my narnia statement fic has come! and herein i answer: what are the pevensies? how will they react to the magnus institute purchasing the wardrobe? no archive crew in this one just yet, but fear not, they are *very* close. enjoy :D
> 
> (title from "no more heroes" by aviators)

Family meetings happen on the anniversary of their parents’ deaths, in a forest not too far from their old home. 

Susan is the first to arrive at the small clearing. She sits down on the damp grass and watches the morning fog dissipate with distant, grey eyes. Her hands are clasped in her lap, and her fingertips are grey, as always. And so she waits, just like every year, with the same stories of dreary London and lonely souls in large crowds ready to be told. 

Lucy arrives with pearling laughter, hair longer each time and clothes in utter disarray. She rolls in the grass next to Susan and spins tales of fantastical beasts and impossible landscapes that used to make Susan’s head hurt something fierce. It doesn’t take long before she starts trying out new braids on Susan’s hair. She’s learned to retract her claws over time. 

-

Lucy was the first to find Susan again, in these new lives of theirs. 

Susan led a young woman to a roaring party, watched her get swept up in the realisation that even this many people could not warm the chill in her heart. The woman sunk into the fog with striking familiarity, and Susan watched with the same distant expression she always wore these days. If her victim thought to look back to her, Susan would have struck her as looking as lifeless as those old oil-paintings of nobles one can’t ever seem to get away from. But she didn’t look back. Susan spent a while enjoying the way the party-goers brushed past her without noticing her. Her fingers were numb as she wrapped her arms around herself.

Then there was a warm hand on her elbow and a dizzying giggle in her ear. Suddenly Susan found herself outside of the party, in the damp October air, and staring at her younger sister. 

It hurt to look at Lucy so directly. Susan’s eyes kept drifting away, but each time she forced them back. Because Lucy was standing there, with a painfully bright grin and too-sharp teeth, and she was alive. 

Inside her chest, Susan’s heart stuttered weakly. Pain shot through her limbs and her head pounded in time with her heart. Emotions she had not felt in years flared up, but she forced herself to keep upright in the onslaught. She tightened her arms around her ribcage and stared. She wanted to say something, to ask how it could be possible; how Lucy could be there. Nothing made it past her tongue.

“I told you it was all real,” Lucy said, at last, another laugh twisted around the words. Then she wrapped familiar arms around Susan’s waist and squeezed. Susan dropped her chin onto Lucy’s head and hugged her back with any strength she could summon. Nothing else was said, not for many minutes.

Lucy didn’t fit into her arms the way she used to, many years ago. She was taller, her hair longer. There was a new power in the way her hands pressed into Susan’s back. Susan didn’t mind any of it. After all, she knew she had changed, as well.

When Lucy left again, the old wound in her heart ripped itself wide open. The fog was stronger, colder. Susan wandered back into London with a smile. 

-

Edmund arrives with the smell of sulfur and smoke trailing into the clearing. As always, his hands are stained black. He lets himself fall next to Lucy and the ground shudders when he lands. He brings tales of explosions, of fascinating customers at his shop, of lives torn asunder by uncaring forces. They remember the raids of the war well enough to know what he means. 

-

Susan was sitting on a broken bench in Hyde Park, watching couples and families wander amidst spring grass and flowers when someone sat next to her heavily enough that the bench shook. Her hairs stood on end, and she immediately knew they were not like her nor like the humans she was watching. 

What she didn’t expect was to turn her head and look into a faintly familiar face, split by an entirely unfamiliar smile. “Hey, Su,” Edmund said with a voice deeper than she remembered. “Finding you is quite the task, you know.” 

Susan felt too many things at once. She felt the fog digging its teeth into her heart, felt old terror clawing at her throat. But most of all, she felt a sudden rush of relief, years of grief collapsing in on themself. Susan blinked, and Edmund folded her into his arms with ease. Her eyes burned, but tears had left her long ago. Instead, she simply hugged him tightly.

“You’ve grown,” she muttered into his shoulder. 

Edmund laughed. “I suppose that is what happens when time passes.” 

Susan pulled away enough to take Edmund in. He was not the eleven-year-old he disappeared as but instead looked to be well into his teens. She pursed her lips. Neither of them looked as they should, given the amount of time it had been. Just another thing that set them apart from those Susan pulled into the fog.

“Time seems to have loosened its hold on you as much as it has on me,” she said and dropped her hands into her lap. Edmund shrugged and leaned back. He was still just as pale as he used to be, the spring sun bringing out his freckles. His hair was falling into his eyes. Susan stamped down on the urge to offer him a haircut. There was a new scar on his chin. 

“I like to think of it as a gift Time is giving us,” Edmund said and crossed his arms. “To do things like hunting down elusive sisters.” He pointedly nodded his head in her direction.

The fog tugged at her hands, invisible in the afternoon air. “Waiting for your return for over a decade must have dulled me to the thought of ever seeing you again.” The bite in her voice felt just as familiar as the scowl on his face. Susan smiled.

-

Peter arrives with the taste of copper in the air, his footsteps perfectly timed to their heartbeats. He settles down next to Edmund with a loud sigh and lays the sword he has taken to carrying with him across his lap. His clothes are rust-coloured in most places, and his tales of back-alley fights and singing blood never diminish the feeling of home he brings with him. 

-

It was Edmund who decided that they should conduct a family meeting. It was Susan who set the date, and Lucy who chose the location. Susan didn’t worry if the fog would grow angry. There was a sweet pang of utter loneliness that only her family could bring forth, and she never doubted that it would be enough to satisfy her patron. 

It was a mild March afternoon when Susan made her way to the small forest and met Lucy in a well-hidden clearing. They had just settled down, Lucy excitedly rocking back and forth, when Edmund and someone else appeared. It took Susan too long to realise who it must be. 

“Peter!” Lucy screamed and flung herself at the tall form of their older brother with unbridled joy. It gave Susan time to take him in. 

Peter had grown just like the rest of them. His hair was messy; the blonde Susan faintly remembered now dark and stiff in places. It took a look at the hands clutching Lucy’s head for Susan to realise that it must be blood. 

“I knew you’d find us as well,” Lucy said and stepped out of the embrace. Behind Peter, Edmund snorted. 

“Dug this one out of a trench for us,” he grumbled and thumped Peter hard on the back. Peter, still the tallest of them, reached out to ruffle Edmund’s hair affectionately. The sight was entirely unfamiliar to Susan. Her mind was stuck on the last time she saw her brothers in the same place, the sound of their shouting match echoing in her ears.

Peter’s eyes were still their old sky-blue when they met Susan’s. His face was grimy and worn. Susan didn’t notice she had stood up until she found herself engulfed in the arms of her brother. Her legs felt too weak to carry her weight. The way Peter picked her up and swung her around in a circle quickly solved that problem. A childhood memory of them doing just this every time Peter returned from primary school pushed into the forefront of her mind, and Susan found herself giggling against all odds.

“Hullo, Su.” She felt his words as much as she heard them, his chest rumbling where her head was buried in it. His heart tapped out a rhythm matched perfectly to hers.

“Welcome home,” she said in response and meant it. 

-

Susan crosses her legs and looks at her family. Lucy is twisting wreaths of flowers and grass for each of them. Susan’s wreath already rests on her head, with Edmund’s placed on his chest as he lies stretched across the grass. His feet are propped up on Peter’s thigh, and his eyes are closed. Peter himself is humming under his breath, running his fingers back and forth across the flat of his sword with a soft smile. 

When the sun starts to set, they will go their separate ways again. Lucy’s world will call for her to return to her throne, Edmund’s shop will have a new customer in need of a spark, Peter will start singing war songs none of them know the harmonies for. Each of her siblings will leave, one after the other, and the hole in her heart will grow again. She will feel too warm, and she will let the fog seep into her skin to bring the cold back. But not yet. 

For now, Peter launches into a tale of yet another fight with sparkling eyes. Susan leans back on her hands with a smile. 

“She stabbed me with a screwdriver of all things.” Edmund snorts, and Susan joins Lucy in her laughter. “You laugh, but it was deep in my arm! I didn’t know she had the force needed for that in her after all that time spent knocked out. I almost thought to ask her if she wanted a job.” 

“I imagine you offering her one would have resulted in another screwdriver in an unfortunate place,” Edmund says and jabs his foot into Peter’s stomach. Peter rolls his eyes and smacks Edmund’s leg with the pommel of his sword.

Lucy stops twisting the flowers in her hands and fixes her siblings with a contemplative look. Susan furrows her brows at the action. “Lu?” 

“The Magnus Institute has the wardrobe,” Lucy says, and Susan’s eyes widen. She reaches out to cover Lucy’s hand with her own.

Edmund turns his head to look at Lucy with furrowed brows. “Do you know what they’re doing with it?” 

“It’s just standing around,” Lucy shrugs. “I think they just want it monitored.” 

“That’s academics for you,” Peter says with a bloodied grin, and Lucy throws the wreath at him. It hits him square in the face. Lucy dissolves into her particular brand of headache-inducing giggles for a while. 

“Are you worried they will step in?” Edmund asks, always straight to the core of an issue. His fingers drum against his chest.

“Oh, they won’t find anything unless I say so,” Lucy waves off and starts a new wreath. Peter threads the half-finished one she threw at him around the hilt of his sword. “I just wonder why now. It’s been left alone for over 60 years.” 

Edmund frowns and pushes up on his elbows. “I don’t like it.” 

“I thought I might pay them a visit, just to see.” Lucy’s smile is broad and full of fangs. Peter nods his head approvingly. 

“They have been awfully active recently,” Edmund muses. 

Susan looks over at him. “Have they?” 

“Mhm. I think a visit is a grand idea, Lucy. Who knows what business that is decidedly not theirs they’re poking around in now.” Edmund jabs his foot into Peter’s stomach again. “Those Eye bastards always find a way to mess with things, huh?” 

Peter pointedly ignores him. “London is getting quite busy again,” he mutters, tilting his sword this way and that. The reflected sunlight cuts clean across his face. “I ran into a Hunter, twice.” 

“What?!” Susan doesn’t quite feel concerned the same way she used to, but it still rears its head from time to time. “Why didn’t you say so?!” Hunters are rarely decent company for their kind and she doesn’t wish to lose any of them again.

“I didn’t think much of it until just now. I’m not hard to miss.” A topic often at the centre of family debates, Susan doesn’t say.

Edmund sits up. “Well, I suppose we will just have to take a look at things.” 

Lucy nods enthusiastically, Peter sheaths his sword, and Susan sighs. “Where do we begin?” 

**Author's Note:**

> why does peter have a sword even though he became an avatar in the 40s? what are the pevensies up to in their daily avatar lives? what on earth awaits the unsuspecting archives crew? well those are tales for another time.  
> if you wanna have a chat about this fic, narnia, tma or anything really, feel free to hit me up in any of these places: [narnia tumblr](https://bloodybigwardrobe.tumblr.com/), [tma tumblr](https://extinctioniscoming.tumblr.com/), [twitter](https://twitter.com/notanycritter)


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